Today there are more than a handful of apps in the App Store for viewing 500px on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Here is a list of the apps currently available for iOS, including the official 500px app for iPad. Some of these apps work on both the iPhone and the iPad while others are built for only either the smaller iPhone screen or the larger iPad screen. There is one official iPad app and 6 others that use the 500px API. A quick overview of 500px could be helpful if you’re not familiar with the portal. 500px is a website for photographers and has been growing slowly since its inception in 2004. It is geared towards promoting and inspiring people (mainly photographers) by both being exposed to other great photos, as well as displaying your own photography. The community of 500px users are different from others like Flickr, in that they are actual photographers. Anyone can join the 500px website, although pro members ($50/year) of the site can access additional features for tracking and improving their portfolio, including photoblogs, analytics, and even a custom personalized domain name. A word of caution: There are nude photos in 500px. Thankfully, most of the apps have an option to filter out photos from the nude section which is helpful.

500px is the official iPad app for 500px and looks stunning. You can manage your profile information but you can’t upload photos from your iPad. The design of the app is probably its strong point. Features and navigation functionality are really well thought out and the UI is super clean as you would expect from an official app. There is no iPhone version of this official app yet unfortunately. Toggle through all the main 500px sections (Popular, Editors’ Choice, Upcoming, Fresh) and a search box for finding photos by name. Log into your account to get access to your own photos, friends and favorites. Slideshow option allows playing music, 3 transition animations, and timing anywhere from 3 seconds to 1 hour. They are missing the …. effect however. Tap any photo to see get access to the photographer’s profile page, see the picture’s rating, mark it as a favorite, or vote for it. Swipe up to read user comments. The biggest issues with this app are: 1) When you follow a user it doesn’t work (huge bug), and 2) Sometimes you run into a long wait (spinner) before the full size photo loads. There is no option for saving your searches. There is an option to filter nude photographs which is off by default. Overall a great app with a few major bugs that will hopefully get fixed.

500px galleries is an iPad app from PoFactory that focuses on simply browsing photos, and doesn’t have the ability for you to log into or manage your account. This app focuses on creating and saving a gallery of photos and is great if you just want to browse the photos and has a variety of options. Besides the basic main sections of 500px you can also create galleries for any user by typing in their username. This means you would have to go to 500px.com on the web and find the username, but once you do, you can save that user’s gallery for future use. When viewing any photo there are a few sharing options plus an icon for saving the original to your iPad camera roll. There are a variety of app options including nude filters, slideshow timers, and a zoom option using the beautiful Ken Burns effect. Finally you can browse top level categories. What this app really needs is a way to search for photos by keyword to make finding users easier.

500px PhotoBook is another iPad app by PoFactory with a different format. This app uses a photobook theme to display the various photo feeds from 500px on your iPad. You can view your favorites, browse by category, and own photos from your user account. You flip through a virtual album of photos which is populated with a random number of photos per page using a classic photo book design. Unfortunately, the performance in this app is super slow and unresponsive, and the design and layout can definitely use a polish.

PhotoStackr for 500px is a universal app for iPhone and iPad that has a few unique features including the ability to upload photos from your device to your 500px account. You can create photo feeds called “stacks” from lists, individual photos, searches, or people. Your saved photo stacks can be pulled up quickly at any time. Once you are in a thumbnail view you can start a slideshow using a Ken Burns effect with optional music. You can also download photos to your iPad from 500px which in most cases does not work since most owners on 500px have prohibited downloading of their works. Uploading is a great feature of this app. Just select photos from your iPad, Camera, or iTunes File Sharing and upload them to your 500px account. You can type in a Title, Caption, and choose a Category for each photo before uploading. You can’t add tags and or edit the EXIF info before you upload. You can choose the upload size to be anywhere from small to full size in the Settings. Add your Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr accounts to post photo links on your social profiles. Finally you can purchase a $1.99 upgrade which adds Flickr functionality to the app.

ISO500 for 500px is an iPhone application from David Charlec for navigating the various public feeds on 500px from your iPhone or iPod touch. Navigation in ISO500 is done using an intuitive rotating wheel which is a joy to use especially for photographers. Feeds include Editor’s choice, Popular, Upcoming, and Fresh. Log into your 500px account to view your profile, photos, favorites, friends list, and friends photos. When viewing a full size photo on the iPhone, ISO500 lets you flick left or right to navigate any list. Here you can also share, vote, add to favorite, write & read comments, and view user profiles where you can save the user to your friends list. ISO500 is a great looking 500px app with smooth navigation perfect for iPhone users. It is however currently missing a couple of important features including keyword search and slideshow playback.

500px view is a bare bones free universal 500px app developed by Dmitri Roudakov. The app has 3 tabs: Fresh photos, Popular photos and Editor’s choice. There is no thumbnail view at all, and photos are just shown one at a time in each list. While 500px view is a free app, it leaves a lot to be desired.

500px RSS is another minimal free iPhone only app for 500px from Quadecco. Here you have a list of photos pulled from the public 500px feeds that you can browse including Fresh, Editors’ Choice, and Best. No thumbnail view, search, login, slideshow, or save functionality are provided.

AppSafari
review of
500px Apps for iPhone and iPad
was written by
Darius Reimm
on
January 31st, 2012
and categorized under
App List, Photos.
Page viewed 5616 times, 2 so far today.
Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.

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One Comment to “500px Apps for iPhone and iPad”

500px is trying to compete against services like Flickr, is very nice, fresh and really has the potential to shake this field once dominated by Flickr. But why they don’t launch a full app like others, where you can actually upload photos directly from your phone/tablet. They seem more concern in selling pictures than providing tools to the paid community. This is why I didn’t renew my subscription and went back to Flickr. I wait to long for an update of their app but nothing.

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